Telecom Ramblings

Qwest Communications (NYSE:Q - chart, news, filings) today unveiled its next step into the developing field of Unified Communications (UC).  The new hosted UC platform, called Qwest iQ Hosted Unified Communication Service (iQ HUCS), is designed to help large enterprises integrate voice, e-mail and video for access by whatever device you might be using, whether a landline, smartphone, computer, or perhaps an iPad.  

Qwest’s first announced customer for the product will be Arizona State University, which will use HUCS to power its communications systems across 4 campuses and 70,000 students, faculty, and staff.  A college campus seems like a very good place to roll out such a product, since you get both the device-happy student generation as well as a wide range of professionals and academics with wildly different levels of technological savvy.  

UC looks like the real deal this year, at long last.  The buzzword may be relatively new, but the general idea has had many names over the years.  It isn’t a single technology, it is the coordination of dozens of them at once.  Most of the individual steps have been possible for a while, it’s just that the overall complexity was too much.  Not anymore though.